Ruidoso murder case topic of Investigation Discovery TV show

An interview and film crew concluded a four-day stay in Ruidoso today, wrapping up an assignment for an episode to appear on the Investigation Discovery network.

The episode focuses on the Ruidoso murder in 1998 of Elizabeth Langhorst-Ballard, a waitress and health care worker, by Charles Martinez and Christopher Faviell, who buried her body in the red clay desert north of Tularosa.

Katrina Yumping with Sirens Media sat down with among others, former lead prosecutor Canon Stevens, now a private attorney in Lordsburg; former Ruidoso Police Chief Wolfgang Born, now retired; and with C. L. Stallings, who co-authored a book about the murder titled, "Death in a Red Desert."

Anne S. Rothwell, co-executive producer of the series "Deadly Affairs," which will include the local murder, said Wednesday this is the second season of the series. Actress Susan Lucci is the host and narrates the action. The season premiere of the series tentatively is scheduled for Aug. 3, she said. The Langhorst-Ballard case will be one of the later episodes, probably in October.

"We are producing 13 hours with two segments each, so 26 separate cases," Rothwell said. Members of the crew handling the interview are Yumping and Greg Francis, and the filming are Tom Inskeep and John Iskander.

Because of the tenacity of the late Jim Biggs, who was a Ruidoso detective at the time, the Lankhorst-Ballard murder investigation broke new ground in DNA testing and research as Dr. Joy Halverson created a data base for comparison of the genetic makeup of dog root hair. She compared hair found in the victim's sock with that of a pitbull pet owned by Martinez and established a probable match, which placed the dead woman in the murder house on Evergreen Street.

Previously filmed by Animal Planet for two different series, the case also hinged on the ability of Born to find Lankhorst-Ballard's body in a vast desert with only a few words from the murderers passed along to Born by their friends to describe the route they drove. Because coyotes dug her body halfway out of the grave, a cadaver dog on his last mission before retirement was able to locate Ballard's remains. The book covering the murder is available at Books Etc. in Ruidoso, at Hastings Books, Music & Video in Alamogordo or at www.deathinareddesert.com.